Jack Deadly - 8 bit-wars comp entry

Started by therevills, February 08, 2019, 09:44:29

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Steve Elliott

Yeah I'm with Adam on this, controls are far from intuitive.
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therevills

#91
I guess you guys have never played the originals! The controls are the same as Rick 2, I spent quite a bit of time getting them just right too  :(

I even added a "How to Play" screen - did you read it.

Quotewhen a simple single fire would do the same thing quicker and simpler

The controls are actually one thing I liked in the originals, it was a single fire you had to actually do the action, eg to fire your gun you need to bring it "up", you need to "drop" a bomb...

Can I "fix" the controls or would that be a feature? (Thinking of adding two controls schemes: Classic and Simple)....

Steve Elliott

#92
Played the originals or not, the controls kinda suck mate.

We're looking for authenticity, but I would suggest we improve on those games, or what is the point?  We might as well use an emulator.

Qube has been criticised for a retro game that looked authentic, but ran too smoothly?!  How far do you take a remake/retro look?  I am certainly not interested in producing poor scrolling for a start.  But I love the pixel retro look.
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Derron

Smooth scrolling is not retro - I explained that in Qube's thread (as the visuals needed to take the "blocky movement" into account - eg. by speed to trick the eyes/brains). As the usage of the original resolution was not a must (so in AGK the "render 2 texture"-method + scaling up) I won't downvote it - except maybe a tiny bit for authenticity (which my game is far away from I know).
But I go d'accord that we should bring "old techniques" together with new gameplay ideas, modernize comfort (mouse, reconfigurable joypads, localization, customizability, ... save wherever you want).


@ controls in the game
I did not play it yet. Developers have to take care that they are not getting too "used" to their controls. I often think that a certain game control works great the way I planned it - until someone else is playing it and blames then how uncomfortable something is.
I understand that splitting up functions to multiple keys allow fine grained control - and also gameplay wise this differs a bit (more finger control needed).
Now we have to decide: is the game dev the one who decides - or the (potential) users?



Regarding a "fix" this is ... hmm unclear for me too. On the one hand it does not offer a new (gameplay) feature and should be allowed -  but on the other hand it is not fixing an issue (missing image, broken savegames, no audio, ...). Yet I would not vote against adding another control scheme (the same way I suggested the Fireball Dungeon-entry should rework the sprite-tinting to show 16 colors, not 60). They are smaller nearly neglectable things which should create no hassle amonst the other contestants.


All in all: do not forget that the compos are made for ... fun!

bye
Ron

Qube

QuoteCan I "fix" the controls or would that be a feature? (Thinking of adding two controls schemes: Classic and Simple)....
As the controls are as intended then to introduce another control system would be classed as a new feature and not a bug. It certainly something you should add and release after the voting is complete though. Personally I don't mind the controls as there were some hellish controls back in the day but even though you're being authentic with the controls an improvement over that original system would be an improvement for your game. I think having the option of old / new control system would work well :)

QuoteQube has been criticised for a retro game that looked authentic, but ran too smoothly?!
I'll come on to that in a mo ;D

QuoteHow far do you take a remake/retro look?
I could have gone for the poor spectrum games of having really naff sprite refresh + terrible artefact scrolling but that would just look terrible on modern hardware.

QuoteSmooth scrolling is not retro - I explained that in Qube's thread (as the visuals needed to take the "blocky movement" into account - eg. by speed to trick the eyes/brains).
Actually smooth scrolling was the golden crown of 8-bit games that the C64 excelled at on TV screens. You can not recreate that via strict authenticity on modern LCD screens as their pixel density and refresh rates differ so you have to "cheat" a little. There were many silky smooth scrolling C64 games and even today some genius has figured out how to do the Amiga game Pinball Dreams on the Amstrad CPC also with silky smooth scrolling ( youtube for proof ).
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Until the next time.

therevills

Spent the last couple of hours adding "Simple Controls", "Classic Controls" are still there but you need to disable "Simple Controls" via the options.

v1.02 uploaded to Itch which has simple controls:

Z: Shoot Laser
X: Roll Bomb
Down + X: Place Bomb
C: Punch

https://therevillsgames.itch.io/jack-deadly

I'll leave v1.01 if you just want to judge that version.

Qube

There is nothing stopping anyone downloading the new version and using that during voting.

For the comp, please remove version 1.02 as it has new features which are against the rules. Feel free to release 1.02 after voting is complete, thanks.
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Until the next time.

Steve Elliott

#97
Quote
Smooth scrolling is not retro

Smooth scrolling was very much possible.  Screens have come on a long way, but you still have to pick your monitor with a 1ms delay to get near the smooth refresh rate of a CRT.  And CRT's enabled the limited colour palettes to give a natural anti aliasing.  Plus the hardware was fixed, so you could optimize for it. On modern hardware trying to emulate old hardware you could very easily do it a disservice.
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therevills

Quote from: Qube on April 06, 2019, 01:32:35
For the comp, please remove version 1.02 as it has new features which are against the rules. Feel free to release 1.02 after voting is complete, thanks.

Fair enough, just hope that I wont lose votes because people think the game is too hard to control :( I spent quite a bit of time getting the controls to be the same as back in the 8-bit days it was rare to have a joystick with more than one button.

Quote from: Derron on April 05, 2019, 23:20:39
@ controls in the game
I did not play it yet. Developers have to take care that they are not getting too "used" to their controls. I often think that a certain game control works great the way I planned it - until someone else is playing it and blames then how uncomfortable something is.

True - but this control scheme has been tested with lots of 8-bit players back in the day.

therevills


Xerra

Fuck, I've been doing it all wrong. So glad you posted this. I hadn't noticed the switches, didn't think of dropping a bomb to get the pick-ups, didn't realise you could duck. I'm going to go back and give it another play now I've seen this.

Think we should all take note because sometimes people don't say when they don't get on with a game, or can't work it out. Watch a video for enlightenment :)
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3DzForMe

#101
Quote.  Fair enough, just hope that I wont lose votes because people think the game is too hard to control :( I spent quite a bit of time getting the controls to be the same as back in the 8-bit days it was rare to have a joystick with more than one button.     

I'd like to make an appeal to allow jack deadly to have easier controls, don't want to put the cat amongst the pigeons. Anyway, my daughters playing it at the moment and says it's Really good, I concur, such polish  ^-^

We've just used the level 1 walkthrough, to quote my 17 year old daughter 'this is actually really clever' Kudos!
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Qube

Quote from: 3DzForMe on April 06, 2019, 19:36:09
I'd like to make an appeal to allow jack deadly to have easier controls, don't want to put the cat amongst the pigeons. Anyway, my daughters playing it at the moment and says it's Really good, I concur, such polish  ^-^

We've just used the level 1 walkthrough, to quote my 17 year old daughter 'this is actually really clever' Kudos!
Lol, of course he can add them but after the voting has closed. It'll be a new feature if added before which becomes unfair for other who also want to add new features.
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Until the next time.

3DzForMe

Quote. Fair enough, just hope that I wont lose votes because people think the game is too hard to control :( I spent quite a bit of time getting the controls to be the same as back in the 8-bit days it was rare to have a joystick with more than one button.     

Fair do s!
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therevills

Level 2 (I was actually out of practice as I hadnt played the game in over a week  :))):